We'll never be any closer to the actual truth of it than Livy and Polybius let us get, so the approach Patrick Hunt uses in his book – taking each working cog of the Hannibal story in its turn and a shining bright light of inquiry on it, bringing everything together so readers can have it all before them – is probably the wisest. And those readers can then go back to Livy on their own time.

I noted the book recently here. Follow the links there (cf. here) for many past posts on Hannibal and the Punic Wars.

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